What is flyfishing?

“Flyfishing is as different to conventional fishing as a car is to a motorcycle.”

In conventional fishing, there is some kind of weight tied on the end of the line and that is what allows an angler to bend/load their rod to make a cast. Flyfishing is different because we can make a cast without any weight tied on the end at all.

So then the advantage of flyfishing is being able to present even the tiniest of flies (called lures in the conventional fishing world) with impressive distance and accuracy. Flies are able to more accurately represent food items because extra weight doesn't have to be incorporated into it to enable a cast.

We still use a rod (usually longer and whippier) to deliver our fly to where it needs to be to get eaten by a fish, but what causes the rod to bend is the weight that’s incorporated into the fly line. The fly line tows the fly. Fly line looks like a thick plastic cord; and that’s the weight that causes the rod to bend/load. There’s not enough weight in a short length of fly line to cast it like you would a conventional rod, and so we have to wave the rod back and forth in a carefully timed motion that gets the line moving to where it needs to go.